WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
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��WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
��BY PARKER PILLSBURY.
��••The emphasis of death makes manifest The eloquence of action in our flesh ; And men, who living were but dimly
guessed. When once free from their life's en- tangled mesh, Show their full length in graves."
No truer words than these, by Mrs. Browning, were ever spoken ; and to none did they ever apply better than to Mr. Garrison. Before his mortal remains were committed to the dust, the pul- pit and the press were sounding his praises from ocean to ocean. And in the next hour the electric nerve under the Atlantic, had waked the sympa- thetic echoes of the Eastern Hemi- sphere.
And now the theme, the song, the joy are one with few discordant notes, to the farthest verge of Christian, or enlightened civilization.
And though the Granite Monthly be to some extent local in its contem- plated themes, a tribute to Garrison cannot be out of place in its pages. He was born for New Hampshire if not in it. His newspaper, The Liber- ator, bore for its motto the words : "My Country is the World ; my Coun- trymen are all Mankind." And his life-work to the very going down of its sun, was a rich, and finally a ripened fulfillment of so noble promise and prophecy.
Mr. Garrison belonged to Universal Humanity. To him were no high nor low, no great nor small, no male nor female. When he read, "All men are created equal," he understood all men. Not a part. And all men meant all women as well.
Garrison was born a truly natural, but in no sense a radical man, as the word is now understood. And yet rightly considered, the truest, or most
��natural man, is the most radical, or best rooted man ; deepest rooted down among the laws and principles which underpin the material, moral and spir- itual universe.
Newburyport, like most of Massa- chusetts, has been renowned more for conservative, calculating, conforming principle and policy, than for the spirit of innovation and advancement. There, have been builded the tombs of the Revolutionary prophets ; there, the sep- ulchres of the sages and heroes of 1 776, of Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall, have been well kept and garnished. But when Garrison arose with his new Evangel, he was hated, hunted, im- prisoned, haltered and barely escaped hanging by an infuriated mob of Bos- ton's best men. "Gentlemen of prop- erty and standing," in beaver hats and broadcloth ; and in broad day-light too !
Such was Boston, such Massachu- setts. And such pre-eminently, was Newburyport, where, on the twelfth of December, 1804, William Lloyd Gar- rison first saw the light.
It had respectable slave traders and religious slave holders ; one wizzard, a boy ; and one witch, an old woman. Her, the church persecuted, the courts prosecuted and held and hunted two full years, and then sentenced, "to be hanged by the neck until you be dead. " But subsequently, she was reprieved and died in her bed (the Reverend John Hale testifying) , " praying to, and resting upon God in Christ for salva- tion."
Mr. Garrison first roused the wrath of the slave power by a newspaper arti- cle, charging a Newburyport sea cap- tain, Francis Todd, with engaging in the coast-wise slave-trade between Bal-
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